spreading the holiday cheer, and even out shopping. since 2009 he's been by president obama's side. but we've never seen him the way we saw him today. this morning the white house press secretary was on "morning joe," and look what happened in the back. take a look to the right of your screen. there was bo video bombing jay carney. so there he was, morning bo. and that's something you can't make up. it is something that can make you smile going into the weekend. thanks for watching. i'm al sharpton. "hardball" starts right now. the hate obama party. let's play "hardball." ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this.

this hatred of the president has sunk deeper and deeper into the republican blood stream. to be a member of the gop in november 2013 is to be a member of the h.o.p., the hate obama party. you must not only oppose him, but everything with his name on it. you must not only hate the president's health care plan, you must support any work of sabotage. the goal is to blow up the program. whether by denying people information, refusing to have your state participate, talking the young people into how to avoid accountability. this is what the enemies have been doing since they first learned of his election just as the southern states began moving towards secession. well, tonight the hate obama party and all its anger and misery. david corn and ron reagan, both are msnbc contributors.

gentlemen, thank you for joining us. this sabotage campaign that was laid out today in today's politico puts together all of the republican party's four-year war to ab soj the affordable care act. he writes from the moment the bill ruz introduced, both houses of congress announced their intention to kill it. the gop faithful then up up their crusade past the president's re-election. let's look at just a few instances of the gop's attack to derail the health care law at all costs. republicans withhold all support when the law first makes its way through both chambers of the commerce in 2009. in 2010, scott brown of massachusetts wins the special election up there after running a campaign to kill the legislation. his victory gives the gop 41 votes in the senate which gives them the power to block any

fixes or improvements in the new law. republican governors across the country refuse to build their own state exchanges putting unexpected pressure on the federal exchanges. then congressional republicans refuse to give hhs the money it needs to build the federal exchange. then there's the obstruction campaigns. they include gop darling like rush limbaugh and dick marsh ways to avoid or sign petitions rejecting their exchanges. then there's the gop icing on the cake. the shutdown and the threat to blow up the economy. strong stuff. ron reagan, i want to start with you. this has been a concerted effort. it's like when you read about lincoln coming to washington because the secession movement has begun. they didn't give this guy a honeymoon. they didn't give him nothing. they started going after him

from the beginning. >> no. and they haven't learned their lesson. they just got their hat handed to them with their government shutdown and the debt ceiling, but they're going to keep this up. it's an ideological war they're fighting where these tea party members, they think the government is bad. not only do they think that obama's government is bad, any government is bad. so they want government to fail. which is a pretty outrageous thing. imagine when the iraq war was getting underway if democrat who is opposed the war and weren't crazy about george w. bush to begin with began denying troops body armor or denying them armored vehicles or things like that. that's the equivalent to what republicans are doing to the health care bill with not expanding medicaid, leaving millions of people to suffer without health insurance. just because of their ideology. >> when they start talking about how the president oversold the

ease of which it will come in, weren't they the guys who called the iraq war a cakewalk? just to remind people. >> one of the most important points i think todd makes in his excellent piece in politico is that the way this town used to work is that when a bill was passed, a big bill, a big program, you knew it would need tweaking along the way. you know, there were unintended consequences. sometimes you see what happens with regulations and tax code stuff. you have to go back in and make what are called technical fixes. back in the days of tip and gipper, maybe if you lost the fight you bring up a bill and say this is neutral to make this work better. . you could get it past both sides. say we want the program to work. that can't happen now. so therefore obama and the executive -- >> explain why. because you can't get the votes to do anything. >> the republicans would use that is as a way to obstruct.

they have to do a lot of this with regulations they otherwise wouldn't do. and it's like throwing gum into the -- >> all these fixes they demand now, they had an opportunity to deliver on right before they got the first part of the health care plan through. then they came around reconciliation. they said we're not giving you a single vote. you've got to do it that way. anyway, republicans continue their efforts to undercut the president's authority by blocking two of its nominees for the supreme court. or the appellate court yesterday. the first was mel watt, the congressman, to head the federal housing finance agency. watt became the first blocked for executive appointment since 1843. the second was patricia millett to the d.c. court of appeals. they're holding it up on the charge that the president is packing the court. when he's simply filling vacancies. in other words, doing his job. here's john cornyn using this

tortured logic on a radio show earlier this week. >> i think we're going to be successful in stopping this court packing experiment and the country will be better for it. i think they ought to let their senators know that courts should not be partisan play things for any administration and ask president obama and the democratic majority leader to stop their court-packing effort. >> ron, john cornyn is an example of the tail wagging the dog. normal circumstances he would be a normal conservative. not a bad guy. normal person trying to do his job in washington leading his party to as many victories as they can get. all well and good. yet he begins to act more like that character sitting with him down there from texas. he begins to imitate like they all do. they all start talking like mike lee and rand paul because they're scared to death one of these will look over and see

them and won't have averted their glance. they're afraid of getting any attention, these people. any kind of conservative unless they're out and out tea party types. it's gotten to be the craziest leading everybody else. because fear of being tagged you're not one of us. >> you're right. guys like cornyn get led around by the nose by the worst elements in their party. david had mentioned tip and the gipper before. i got home from a trip overseas to find that book by a young up and coming political named matthews. it reminded me that in the old days, you know, as david was mentioning, you got things done even if you disagreed. tip o'neill and my father were about as different as any two people could be. ideologically, personally, all of that. yet they understood that america can't stand still.

the elections have consequences and the winners get to kind of enact their program and so, you know, you fight and all that sort of stuff, but things have to get done. this republican party has decided the best way to go is to just not let anything happen. make america stand still for four to eight years. that's a recipe for disaster. >> and the craziest -- thank you for that, by the way. but the thing about it, david, is the use of the word impeachment. i've been through all the impeachment exercises. back with nixon, of course. it didn't make everybody feel great. and the talk of impeachment for other guys all the time. this time they're talking about it without a case in particular. there's no watergate. there's nothing. they just say let's impeach the s.o.b. what is this about? >> it's about going as far as you can. outside of calling from being

quartered, there's nothing you can do. congressman steve stockman, a tea party extremist has sent a book to every member of the house saying -- >> let's not call these books. they're pamphlets put out by some -- >> but it's written by a birther. that's the other thing. it's written by a birther who works for world net daily which is a birther publication website. and you don't see john boehner and the republican party saying, hey, cut this crap out. >> ron, do you think there's any sense of self-doubt dare i raise the issue with the right wing, when they're talking about this guy from canada. fair enough he's natural born in my opinion. born to an american mother. and where's donald trump been? where's the birthers? how have they embraced this guy who everybody knows was born in canada. fair enough, but the same

thing -- what are they? just living in this crazy split screen world where they trash a democrat or a black guy for the same thing you worship another guy? >> strange as it seems, yes. yes they do live in that split screen universe. >> you're in one right now with ted cruz right now. you're looking good. thank you for joining us. aunk thank you, david corn. coming up, double down says the obama campaign seriously considered dumping joe biden from the ticket and putting on hillary. plus the republican war on the poor, no surprise here. food stamps cut. medicaid, don't expand it. the philosophy seems to be if you're poor, you're lazy. don't look to us for help. also don't blame both parties for the paralysis in washington. if someone demands your house, car, dog, there is no room for compromise. it's the gop that's gone off the rails.

it's time so-called objective journalists stop taking dictation and start reporting. finally, you've got the questions i've got the answers. i'll answer your twitter questions. and this is "hardball," the place for politics. when we built the cadillac ats from the ground up, to be the world's best sports sedan... ♪ ...people noticed. ♪ something like a phenomenon, baby ♪ ♪ you're something like a phenomenon ♪ [ male announcer ] the cadillac ats, 2013 north american car of the year. lease this cadillac ats for around $299 per month with premium care maintenance included. i started part-time, now i'm a manager.n. my employer matches my charitable giving. really. i get bonuses even working part-time. where i work, over 400 people are promoted every day. healthcare starting under $40 a month. i got education benefits. i work at walmart.

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after president obama's popularity took a hit. his top aides considered a radical move. replacing joe biden with hillary clinton on the 2012 ticket. the new book is called "double down." according to reports, it's not out until tuesday, the authors reveal the group included bill daly. they used focus groups and polls to see what difference it would make. in the end they decided it wouldn't change things dramatically for the ticket and dropped the idea. on cbs this morning, bill daly himself conceded he did consider it, but there was never a serious discussion, as he says. >> it was looked at. but it was never seriously looked at in the sense that there was a belief that it ought to be done or needed to be done. and the truth is any research that was done confirmed the fact that that was not an issue that the voters cared about or thought that should be done.

in 2011 as you remember, nora, it was a very difficult political year. so my sense was we ought to look at everything here. because this is a -- it was a very difficult period politically. >> here's jay carney responding to the report in the book coming out tuesday. >> it's important to know that campaigns and pollsters as part of campaigns test a lot of things. what i can tell you without a doubt is that the president never considered that and had anyone brought that idea to him, he would have laughed it out of the room. joe biden has been an asset to this president in two campaigns and throughout five years of this administration. >> well, chris saliz is an msnbc contributor. and michael sheirer for "time" magazine. there's one way to play it down.

i guess that's what bill daly was doing. the key is he accepted the fact of this book that there was a set of focus groups taken, there was money spent to try to decide whether to dump the vice president who was close to bill daly personally and close to the president. they were that worried that they conducted all this research to dump him. and then they decided after getting the research, not deciding ahead of time we love this guy. but after the research saying it's not worth it. and take a lot of heat. that's what we know now as a fact. >> here's what i'll say first, chris. mark halperin and john heilemann have written this book in which they've written a lot of explosive stuff and not any of it has been denied. >> daly didn't deny it. >> no. absolutely. he said it was true. so why did they do it and decide not to. i do actually buy some element

of the daly argument which is, look, president obama wasn't in a great place. we were trying to figure out what best way to give him a chance to get re-elected. we wanted to think about this. i think on its face, i don't think you even needed to conduct polling but they did. on its face i think we always talk about this. maybe they should trade out this. george w. bush he thought about getting rid of cheney. it doesn't -- i think it reeks too much of panic and desperation. so that minus almost certainly cancels out any pluses you might get. >> let me go to michael. knowing all that, we know how it makes you look weak and desperate and very selfish to dump a very loyal running mate. it really hurt, i think, gerald ford when he dumped rockefeller. it makes you look like a guy losing altitude in a plane and throwing chairs out the door. why would they think of doing it knowing the price of doing it? >> i think they're running a

campaign that was going to test everything and be run by numbers. >> you're saying it's the puff. >> all running a second term this happens. >> how about bush in his diary i should have dumped quayle but i can't admit it. >> the scandal is that it's leaking now for someone like biden who already has a tense relationship between his staff and the west wing staff. >> what's that about? what is the friction? >> i think it has to do with them thinking they're serving different masters. that creates tensions. all the reporting i've seen and done has always said the relationship between obama and biden personally between the men is good. and surprisingly good for both men. but with the staff, it hasn't worked. >> the idea of picking biden like picking cheney is you picked a guy that wasn't going

to run. i don't think they thought he could go for another eight years as president. the most difficult job in the world. i guess that changes somewhere. i get the sense biden would like to be president and he's actively doing things like tagging up in pennsylvania a lot. being seen with the president on any stage of significant. positive ways to be v.p. but they show ambition politically. >> i think if hillary clinton doesn't run, joe biden does run right now. one quick thing on your point and michael's point on the tension among the staff. this is not new for joe biden. he's had a political team around him since 1987. so he brought all that with him. one point i would say about the substituting or the thought of substituting, as you know, chris, biden was picked in 2008 because he was the kind of steady hand on the tiller. he knew washington. there were concerns that barack obama might not be ready, biden

was aimed at quieting them. fast forward two years. i think that's inevitably true with presidents. i think it's why you always see the phenomenon of they think about the possibility of changing the v.p. and decide not to. >> i think it looks bad to dump a guy. the authors obtained a memo from chris christie's vetting process to be vice president. quote, according to a memo on christie from the vetting team, it had unanswered questions from early in his political career on a securities and exchange commission settlement involving mr. christie's brother. and on his medical sister. the dossier was littlered with potential land mines. meanwhile mitt romney had another issue with the governor.

his weight. romney marvelled at christie's girth, his difficulties in making his way down the narrow aisle of the campaign bus. watching a video of christie without his suit jacket on romney cackled to his aides, guys, look at that. if i were him and i liked the guy, i would be ticked of something putting off questions about the vetting not getting answers. >> it was clear during the campaign and after that the relationship between christie's staff and christie in particular in the campaign were rough. and i think there were raw feelings. >> because he stood with the president on sandy? >> even before that. that happened afterwards, but even before that coming out of the convention we had stories of christie being problematic behind the stage, being upset after the convention speech. >> he'd be a terrible vice presidential nominee. there's nothing about that man that says vice president. it's like barbara streisand once said.

i'm either going to be really successful or nothing. not halfway successful. >> he was a guy that could connect to the republican base. >> yeah. but do you think he's good at taking orders, this guy? >> yeah, not so good. tomorrow morning time.com is going to publish an excerpt of the book about chris christie. >> that's good. don't buy the book. just o go to time.com. >> you have to buy the book. just go read the tease. >> thank you. you have a nice cackle too. >> i do my best. >> nora o'donnell has the best. up next, your turn to play "hardball" with me. i'm going to answer your twitter questions. this is "hardball," the place for politics. clay.

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the end. lovely read susan. but isn't it time to turn the page on your cup of joe? gevalia, or a cup of johan, is like losing yourself in a great book. may i read something? yes, please. of course. a rich, never bitter taste cup after cup. net weight 340 grams. [ sighs ] [ chuckles ] [ announcer ] always rich, never bitter. gevalia. welcome back to "hardball." tonight it's my chance to play "hardball" with you and answer some of your questions from twitter and facebook. the first question tonight comes from donna marie.

she asks how do we get reasonable, sensible republicans to step forward and flex their muscles to shut down the loud r fringe? i think it's democrats that have to do that. find moderate deals. even progressive deals that some republicans will go along with to show you can produce legislation and create positive government. that's one thing you can bet that the hard right will never get involved with. onto our next question from carl. he asks how do you see the political divide playing out over the next ten years and what can an interesting citizen do to make a difference? if you're for hillary clinton, work for her. she has a good chance of becoming our next president. on the right side i think there'll be a big test in this country. you'll see a civil war on the republican side reach its climax. a battle between somebody like rand paul or ted cruz on the right and maybe chris christie on the center right. and that's going to battle out for who's the next future of the republican party.

however, if the right wins the nomination and gets blown away by hillary clinton in the fall, good-bye. anyway, our next question comes from christopher. he asks has your job gotten any easier to do over the years? do you find it as challenging as ever? >> actually it's gotten easier because the politics have gotten easy to follow. the democratic party is the party it's always been. it hasn't changed much from the days of humphrey and stevenson. it's a center left party leaning to the center in a lot of parts of the country. then you get the republican which has moved almost entirely in terms of leadership to the hard right. people line boehner, they're following the hard right. people line john cornyn of texas is following leadership of ted cruz. you've got a hard right party against a center left party. it's not easy to fight and understand the issues. thanks for your questions. on monday, by the way, 1:00 p.m. eastern i'll be hosting our first live q & a on the new

msnbc.com. i'll answer your questions about my book that's out there right now. and also everything to do with "hardball." just go to hardball.msnbc.com. you'll see the live q & a post. click join the discussion and start leaving your answers in the let's play hardball group thread. see you there monday at 1:00 p.m. eastern. up next, why are the republicans waging a war on the poor? they surely are. why? you're watching "hardball," the place for politics. ire event? your ford dealer. who has 11 major brands to choose from? your ford dealer. who's offering a rebate? your ford dealer. who has the low price tire guarantee, affording peace of mind to anyone who might be in the market for a new set of tires? your ford dealer. i'm beginning to sense a pattern. get up to $140 in mail-in rebates when you buy four select tires with the ford service credit card. where'd you get that sweater vest? your ford dealer.

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i'm page hopkins with breaking news out of the los angeles airport. a chaotic scene there as a gunman identified as 23-year-old paul ciancia opened fire killing one tsa agent and injuring two others.

this video released by tmz. there are reports he may have been targeting those agents. the suspect wounded in a gunfight with law enforcement is now in custody. and now we're going to take you back to "hardball." ♪ welcome back to "hardball." republicans have been relentless and ruthless even in their effort to block this president at every turn. we point out that fact frequently on this program. it's just as easier to point out those paying the steepest price are often those who can least afford it. the poor. today paul krugman talks about the gop obsession to block the president's health care law. quote, republicans are clearly passionate about making sure that the poor and unlucky get as little help as possible.

all this hostility to the poor has culminated in the truly astonishing refusal of many states to participate even in the medicaid expansion. bear in mind that the federal government would pay for this expansion and that the money thus spent would benefit hospitals as well as the direct recipients themselves. the majority of republican controlled state governments are, it turns out, willing to pay a large economic and fiscal price in order to make sure aid doesn't reach the poor. and food stamp recipients face a double gut punch. today their benefits will be cut 5% when an increase that went into effect in 2009 expires. to put this in perspective, the budget and policy priorities estimates it's equivalent to cutting 16 meals a month for a family of three. and the poor could take another hit. the house and senate are now trying to meld two issues to the farm bill.

to show you how far apart they are, house republicans want to cut the food stamp program by $39 billion over ten years. the bipartisan senate plan calls for just $4 billion in cuts to the food stamp program. that's a lot of ground to cover between them. steve israel of new york. congressman, i am amazed. it used to be you fought over a bill, you'd have a signing ceremony. that'd be the end of the fight because it was the law of the land. that's how we played it here. that's how america works. you debate, a majority or 60 senators in the senate case and you have a bill and sign it, you move on. this time there's this sort of war of attrition. a sort of war of rear guard action if you will like people firing machine guns every day to keep the heads down of everybody trying to implement this. you find out the congress won't even play for the implementation cost. you see right wing commentators like limbaugh telling people you can hide your money if you don't

have a big refuchbd so they don't sanction you. a way to teach people to avoid personal accountability. i've never seen anything like it. it's unbelievable. >> no, and this is who they are, chris. they are reckless. they are irresponsible, and they are hypocritical. let me give you a perfect example on the farm bill you cited. starting today 47 million americans will receive cuts in their food stamps. 22 million children, 900,000 veterans. there are, however, 11 house republicans who voted to strip or significantly reduce food stamps from the farm bill, but protected their personal subsidies. so one congressman steve fincher from tennessee voted to cut food stamps for his constituents because we couldn't afford them, but he received $3.5 million in direct payments from the federal government because he owns a farm. 11 republicans have decided to protect their pocketbooks while hurting and removing food from the mouths of their

constituents. that's just hypocrisy at its worst and it's destructive. >> in this case they're backing money going to create more potential for agriculture in this country so we don't use it. in other words, we don't use agricultural land to feed people. we just have it there to provide funds for u.s. congress people and other people with wealth. >> that's exactly right. these 11 republican members of congress who give sanctimonious speeches about how we conditioned afford to help the poor are being enriched by their own votes. they're feathering their own nests. >> what do you make of john kasich who is the governor of ohio, a republican. i'm concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. that if you're poor somehow you're shiftless and lazy. there's a guy who's heard all the country club lines because he's not a country club republican. and he's heard that kind of sneering comment from the rich. i heard it the other day at a pretty well off school. a kid complaining about how the poor people get too much welfare

money. and of course i asked the kid how much they get. he had no idea. but he heard it at home or heard it on fox. this idea that the federal budget is caused by welfare payments is nonsense. yet the country club argument is that's those lazy shiftless people. now you have that as a republican doctrine here. >> that's right. and the republican doctrine is based on the precip that they don't care about people like you or me. they care about their own special interests. here's another example. they say we can't afford public assistance for poor people and working families. and yet they vote every year to continue a $40 billion windfall subsidy for the richest oil companies on earth. why don't we reduce that subsidy and use that to make investments in the middle class, help rebuild the middle class and get this economy stronger than it is right now. it's just a matter of priorities.

>> do you think you can jack up the democratic party in a mid-year? can you get them excited as right wingers were in 2010 to destroy obama? after going through the shutdown, a near miss of a financial collapse in this country, a default. all this engineered not by crazy movements in the market but by deliberate decision making by the party that basically screwed this economy. they were sitting here planning to do that until they finally lost heart in what they were doing. do you think that will drive enough democrats to the polls next year to offset what happened in 2010? >> yes. right now we have the wind at our back. the wind is being propelled by voters who have rejected this reckless republican behavior that was willing to put our economy at risk. and hurt the middle class financially in order to achieve a partisan objective. so independent voters, senior voters who know that the position going into our budget conference will be cut medicare but don't cut oil company subsidies. so seniors are with us.

people have seen these republicans, these reckless republicans at their worst. it is searing. they feel it and i believe that we're going to see a significant momentum going into the midterm elections. >> thank you so much. steve israel of new york chairman of the democratic congressional campaign committee. right now to a former special assistant of president obama. danielle, i was struck as i often am i numbers. what i noticed the other day -- obviously it doesn't predict class or anything. but african-american bs as a large part of the population are very strong for the president's health care plan. this isn't just ethnic loyalty to the president. tell me why you think there's that strong measure of support for people's own interests or i think that's what's driving it for the health care plan as a group. >> right. well, i think they understand they cut through the noise they hear and realize the affordable care act will be a great benefit

to them and their families. so i think that's what's driving the majority of support among african-americans and also other communities of color. >> do you think it's because working poor people that have jobs work 40, 45, 50 hours a week but don't have the leverage to demand health care, can't get it because it's more marginal. it seems it's not about poor people because they've got medicaid. and even under the new plan, more people. this is about the group a little bit higher, closer to the middle benefitting here. >> that's exactly right. and a part that's been arrannge me about the republican outcry is these are all people who have very nice health care. these are people who get it through their employer. they don't understand what millions and millions of americans are going through who have to fight out on the individual market and try to navigate the system. for a lot of african-americans, a lot of working families, a lot of other people of color, the

affordable care act is a god send to them. they will finally be able to search for health care, they'll be able to look at competing plans and cover their families. it's republicans out there saying all this stuff. again, they're not thinking about the average everyday american who really is struggling to make ends meet and who needs the affordable care act. >> by the way, speaking of a search, go out there to anybody and try to find the republican health care plan. there ain't no such thing. >> where is it? it doesn't exist. >> please come back again. danielle gibbs leger. up next, how people like ted cruz is crippling government. and this is "hardball," the place for politics. [ male announcer ] playing in the nfl is tough.

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yeah? then how'd i get this... [ voice of dennis ] ...safe driving bonus check? every six months without an accident, allstate sends a check. silence. are you in good hands? we're back. partisanship and dysfunction have disrupted washington. one party in particular is to blame. quote, one of the two major parties the republican party has become an insurgent outlier. scornful of compromise unpersuaded by understanding of facts, evidence, and science.

and dismiss iof the legitimacy. in the book "it's even worse than it looks." extreme politics is harmful to our society. i know a bit about it when i wrote for my new book myself. anyway, your book is a parallel to what i'm writing. you're co-author with a resident scholar. let me ask you about when you walk in a party where you meet your family members and they say why has it gotten so bad, why does it suck. >> and you know what i have to tell them is we've really seen a cultural change. but what's happened in tribalism has taken over. of course we have partisan and ideological polarization. we know it's very different from the era of tipper -- tip and the gipper. but it's become tribal in

nature. you live in a world where one party's attitude is if this president's for it, i'm against it. even if i was for it yesterday. we saw it carry out with the health care plan that was a republican plan. and a gun measure where pat toomey himself said that the background check failed because members were not going to vote for something that the president was for. it tells you we've gone beyond the usual kinds of differences that you report about so well to something else. >> yeah, i think it's going to be something as simple as this. you used to fight because you disagreed on things. that's why you had fights. because on issues of taxation or fiscal policy or foreign policy. what you did with how we dealt with central america and nicaragua. today they disagree because they fight. because they're fighting with each other, they have to disagree on every single thing. it's anything that's got obama's jersey on it has to be slain. . >> and when we did the paperback version of the book just out, which we could've titled it's even worse than it was from when

the book originally came out. i had a little bit of hope after the 2012 election when the permanent campaign might die down a little bit that it would get better. but it hasn't. but it's gotten worse than it was. and it really is an attempt to delegitimize the president and a party. but it's also that the core of the republican party, the leadership, there are no moderates anymore. the conservatives, the ones that you wrote about now have been eclipsed by the radicals. that's the difference. the republican party is -- >> like john cornyn, scared to death of ted cruz and he's trying to act like him. let me ask you a question that sounds ludicrous. do you think the people on the hard right are more driven by the need in their hearts to get rid of obama's president than they are to elect the republican president? they'd rather get rid of him than pick somebody they like for president. it's a negative impulse now. >> yeah, and i think one of the things that makes me more than a

little dprepressed is normally u lose a few elections and begin to rethink things. i think you've got a group of house members who are only worried about primaries if that. many of them worry about nothing. and the south now, which is the region that drives the republican party and it's a party in the south that is almost -- that cares more about a contest than they do about promoting a radical ideology or harming -- >> okay. here's the tough one. if president obama were a perfect all around president politician. in other words, we all know he can give inspiring speeches. >> yeah. >> we all know he can have great values and great purpose. we know all that. and i like his foreign policy. if he was also good at lobbying on capitol hill, good at hanging out with members of congress, working personal relationships like the old guys did we talk about. if he had all that skill and didn't hang out with his daughters or wife at night, then politics, would he be able to breakthrough the crack?

we'd be able to crack through the ice of opposition by the republicans. >> that is such nonsense, chris, that people have promoted that the idea if only he could schmooze. after they'd shut the government down. >> just like israel. make peace. with whom. find me the guy that's going to come in and deliver for the next 20 years, at least. >> i think it was good if barack obama would've reached out and develop a base. >> well, could he have ever gotten boehner to the table with him on any kind of deal to make a more moderate health care plan? remember in the beginning of health care we talked about 70 senators. we'd bring in mike enzi from wyoming, people like that? >> the whole thing was built around. when max baucus sat down with chuck grassley to negotiate seven months of fruitless negotiations, the beginning ploy

was we're going to use your framework from 1993/'94. one of the things that's bizarre, you've got a health care plan driven around private competition. >> republicans. >> which is what republicans ought to embrace that, it would advance their ideology. but he had no opportunity from the beginning. when robert draper reported in his book that inaugural eve we had a strategy that they were going to vote against everything in unison. basically killed all of that from the getgo. >> i want to get your voice in here. local media when it covers politics, they don't have a lot of reporters. some don't have a political reporter anymore. one politician goes to something, they quote him, quote the other guy and say a lot of finger pointing today and drop it. they never explain who's right. they never show any discernment about what is said.

is that a problem today with media, national, mainstream media, simply says well, the democrats, republicans are fighting again today. >> it's a huge problem and it's a problem because if you've got some bad behavior. if you can't report the truth of it and hold people accountable, they'll just keep doing it. >> yeah. >> but it is an enormously strong tendency in the national media. it's changed a little bit in the last few months. >> what drives it? fear of being called liberal? >> don't want to be called liberal. also that you're struggling for audiences and advertising. and if you're labeled as bias, you may lose some portion of what you've got. >> separate views of reality. it's hard to say it's objective truth. a lot of people don't accept the sky color we see. thank you so much. we'll be right back. a very funny guy too, usually. we'll be right back after this. help the gulf recover and learn from what happened so we could be a better, safer energy company. i can tell you - safety is at the heart of everything we do. we've added cutting-edge technology,

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let me finish tonight with this. i'll be on the "today" show tomorrow morning, and then to annapolis to present my book "tip in the gipper," a solid review of the book that called it an entertaining and insightful account of the relationship between the speaker and the president. in chapters, it narrates the rise of those two politicians of irish decescent and their battl. to finally find common ground and compromise at the end of the day. so go out this weekend, get a copy, it'll